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I’m planning to write a blog post about comedy in the near future. For now, you can enjoy this interesting TED talk by Peter McGraw, one of the researchers that developed the Benign Violation Theory. You can read more about it here.

Brain training games claim to boost your mental skills. But while practicing a game might make you better at it, research in young people has shown it doesn’t improve how well you perform other cognitive tasks in everyday life. Now a new study suggests the case may be different for adults above the age of 60. Researchers at the University of California have designed a driving game called NeuroRacer. In this Nature Video, we see how the game can improve an older player’s short-term memory and attention, skills which decline with age.

I came across a fun little study published on the Psychology of Music. The experimenters designed a simple experiment to test whether music plays in role in sexual selection. To be honest, I am not sure if that was what they actually tested but I’ll let you decide on that. It seems that what they tested was whether holding a guitar case increases women’s receptivity to a courtship solicitation – if you are attractive, male and live in France. The participants were 300 young females with an estimated age between 18 and 22 years, who were walking alone in several shopping streets of a medium-sized city in France. The experiment was conducted on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the beginning of the summer period. A 20-year-old man, previously evaluated as having a high level of physical attractiveness, acted as confederate.

The participants were selected following a random assignment in which the confederate was instructed to approach the first young woman in the age group (18–22 years) who appeared alone on the pedestrian walkway. He was instructed not to select a participant according to her physical attractiveness, the way she was dressed, her height, etc. He was instructed to wait until a young woman between approximately 18 and 22 years of age passed by him in the street, and then to approach her… The confederate was instructed to approach the young women with a smile and to say, “Hello. My name’s Antoine. I just want to say that I think you’re really pretty. I have to go to work this afternoon, and I was wondering if you would give me your phone number. I’ll phone you later and we can have a drink together someplace.” According to the experimental conditions, the confederate held in his hands a black acoustic guitar case (guitar case condition), a large black sports bag (sports bag control condition), or nothing (no bag control condition). After testing 10 women in one condition, the confederate was instructed to move to another area and to select a new experimental condition according to a random distribution.

The confederate talked to 300 women in one afternoon.. Impressive. The results? In the guitar case condition, 31% (!) of the women gave their phone number to the confederate , compared to 9% in the sports bag condition and 14% in the no bag control condition. It seems that holding a guitar case is an effective strategy if you’re attractive. Holding a sports bag seems to have the opposite effect. There are many problems with this study which the authors recognise. First of all, they only used one confederate and his physical attractiveness was high. He was voted as the most good looking guy among a list of others in a previous study. As a result, it is difficult to generalise the effects to other male confederates with various attractiveness levels. It’d be interesting to see if holding a guitar case would increase women’s receptivity to a courtship solicitation by an average looking male. Also, only one instrument was manipulated in this study. Could the effect be limited to the guitar?

I’ve always been interested in science communication. Perhaps, because that’s how I got interested in science in the first place. Documentaries, public talks, popular science books. So, whenever I get the chance I try to give something back. No, I’m not hoping to inspire people to become scientists – there’s enough competition already (joking)! Challenging their views and making them come up with interesting questions are probably the most important things.

Taking part at the Street Wonder Fair in the first week of April during BNA 2013 was an excellent opportunity for public engagement. So you can imagine how excited I was when our project “A sixth sense and beyond” was accepted! Brains AND Barbican (if you ever visit London, you must visit this place); perfect.

Here’s a brief description of what we attempted to do:

Have you ever wanted an extra sense? How about using sonar to see in the dark, or always keeping your bearings with an internal compass? Explore the mysterious world of sensory augmentation, and decide what extra sense you would have.

You might be a bit disappointed to see that we didn’t really give people “a sixth sense”, but remember, this is a cognitive psychology/neuroscience blog. It did work though. It got people’s attention. Festival attendees were given the chance to experience how it feels to have an “extra sense” by wearing a hat connected to a small device which gave them an “internal compass” by indicating the direction of the magnetic north through vibration. The device was inspired by a similar gadget that was developed in the University of Osnabrück.

See a photo of the unit below:

Attendees were asked to close their eyes and point to the direction of the magnetic north following the signals from the hat. Kids were given the opportunity to play a modified version of pin the tail to the donkey game (see pic below). There was a ongoing debate whether the animal was a donkey or a giraffe – to me it’s clearly a giraffe.

It was rewarding to see both adults and children having fun with device. Here are a few pics from our last day:

We also asked the participants what would their answer be to the question ‘If you could have any extra sense, what would it be?’ and encouraged them to write it down on a board. People came up with a few interesting ideas. We’re still debating whether some of them are actually senses!

Here are some of the answers people gave:However, some of those choices promoted further discussions about the senses with various attendees.

I have some experience in public engagement (ScienceBrainwaves) but I’d never taken part in such a big event. Even though standing in front of the stall talking to people for hours for 3 consecutive days was exhausting (there were only 3 of us, so we could only take (very) short breaks), it was a fascinating experience! I’m really sorry for not having enough time to check out all the other stalls. There were so many researchers having interesting demonstrations – from knitting neurons to virtual brain surgery! Hoping I get the chance to be part of a similar event in the future.

I never expected to see this. Using LOL cats to describe a new study? The result is surprisingly good. Maybe I’m slightly biased because I love cats.

Here’s the abstract of the newly published (31/01) Nature paper in case you want to learn more:

Stroking of the skin produces pleasant sensations that can occur during social interactions with conspecifics, such as grooming1. Despite numerous physiological studies (reviewed in ref. 2), molecularly defined sensory neurons that detect pleasant stroking of hairy skin3, 4 in vivo have not been reported. Previously, we identified a rare population of unmyelinated sensory neurons in mice that express the G-protein-coupled receptor MRGPRB4 (refs 5, 6). These neurons exclusively innervate hairy skin with large terminal arborizations7 that resemble the receptive fields of C-tactile (CT) afferents in humans8. Unlike other molecularly defined mechanosensory C-fibre subtypes9, 10, MRGPRB4+ neurons could not be detectably activated by sensory stimulation of the skin ex vivo. Therefore, we developed a preparation for calcium imaging in the spinal projections of these neurons during stimulation of the periphery in intact mice. Here we show that MRGPRB4+ neurons are activated by massage-like stroking of hairy skin, but not by noxious punctate mechanical stimulation. By contrast, a different population of C fibres expressing MRGPRD11 was activated by pinching but not by stroking, consistent with previous physiological and behavioural data10, 12. Pharmacogenetic activation of Mrgprb4-expressing neurons in freely behaving mice promoted conditioned place preference13, indicating that such activation is positively reinforcing and/or anxiolytic. These data open the way to understanding the function of MRGPRB4 neurons during natural behaviours, and provide a general approach to the functional characterization of genetically identified subsets of somatosensory neurons in vivo.

Faith Jegede tells the moving and funny story of growing up with her two brothers, both autistic — and both extraordinary. In this talk from the TED Talent Search, she reminds us to pursue a life beyond what is normal.

Writer Faith Jegede draws on her experiences growing up with two autistic brothers in order to spread awareness and understanding about this increasingly common diagnosis (from TED)

I was pleasantly surprised by this. Some very interesting points about “normality” that are often forgotten by scientists/clinicians/researchers/etc.